Project Zomboid is the ultimate in zombie survival. Alone or in MP: you loot, build, craft, fight, farm and fish in a struggle to survive. A hardcore RPG skillset, a vast map, a massively customisable sandbox and a cute tutorial raccoon await the unwary. So how will you die?

Miksi Early Access?

“Project Zomboid is a much more ambitious game than we could ever have hoped to fund ourselves. It has grown massively over the years, we've had our ups and downs, but find ourselves in a stable financial situation with an overwhelmingly positive reaction from the Steam community. We hope you will join us, but if not we understand. If you're not ready to jump in yet, then please consider us when we break out of Early Access. We have a demo too, if you'd like to give the game a try. Please be aware there may be a few compatibility glitches, but these can always be resolved by either turning off the Steam overlay for the game, or turning off 3D models on older cards.

How often do we update the community?

We have weekly newsletters, known as 'Mondoid's, which we publish on our site and on the Steam announcements every Monday (unsurprisingly) as a small tonic to the depressing 'back to work' feeling. These detail what we've been up to during the week, often with sneak peeks of upcoming features, interviews, videos and all that goodness. We've had an unbroken chain of Mondoids for well over a year now, and plan to continue them as long as Project Zomboid is developed. We also communicate with our community directly on our own forums and Steam forums, often with changelists for upcoming builds.

How often do we update?

We have a reputation that seems to diverge greatly when it comes to update frequency depending on who you ask. Many consider our game frequently updated, many consider us slow. In recent times it’s rare we don’t have a release within a month (including beta releases), and these always contain new gameplay features or major tweaks to the gameplay.

Some features, particularly NPCs, have taken a long time to implement. This is largely out of our commitment to getting the features right and them not disappointing on release, but it should be noted that we make no apology for delaying their release until we feel they would be enjoyed, live up to people’s expectations, and most importantly do not have a detrimental effect on the gameplay or stability of the game.

Here is a list of recent update dates. It should be noted that full releases often contain many more features than previous beta releases and for those looking for new content can often be considered distinct releases within themselves.

We will admit to a few long waits between updates in the past, but we feel from community feedback that the majority of our customers are very satisfied with the development of the game. It should be pointed out too that the game has significant modding support, with map editors and full unrestricted lua modding access. We have a vibrant modding community that can help plug the gap between updates. It should also be taken into consideration that the game is already very far through development, to the point we have had recently discovered the first known 1000+ hour player - There is a lot of content to enjoy in the game already and we firmly and proudly believe it worth its current price as it stands. Please consider reading some reviews if you are still unsure about the content of the game or the release frequency.

Development Costs

Here we hope to give you a better idea of how the sales revenue from Project Zomboid will support development of the game. While we will keep particular developers salaries confidential, we would like to offer a breakdown of developer and office locations, along with the average rent costs, reported on http://www.numbeo.com/ for the Indie Stone offices, along with each developer's location to give you an idea of relative studio costs. It's become clear to us recently how significantly this factors into Early Access games chance of continuing development and we hope others will follow suit in divulging this information.

All percentages are in comparison to New York City (100%) - Other examples would be San Francisco (98.66%), London (93.81%), Moscow (52.71%) and Delhi (9.53%). The lower the % the further your purchase of an Early Access game will go to fund development (or more crucially how long that money will last), as accommodation costs correlate pretty closely with expected salaries and costs of living and working in that location. (Please note that in several cases the developer lives sufficiently outside the given city to make the actual %s likely much lower than reported)

3x Developers + Office
Newcastle Upon Tyne, United Kingdom - 32.37%

1x Developer
Brighton, United Kingdom - 56.37%

1x Developer
Toronto, Canada - 51.78%

1x Developer
Surrey, Canada - 30.87%

1x Developer
Lille, France - 31.59%

Monthly development costs are currently recouped within approximately the first 1.5 weeks of the month on average, which means at present each month produces extra funds to further develop the game should sales dry up. This does not include sales or other promotions.

What if PZ stopped making any money tomorrow?

The Indie Stone have made sufficient sales since November last year to ensure that if the game stopped selling any copies tomorrow, the entire PZ dev team could carry on funded development as at present, with no reduction in workforce, for at least the next two years, potentially longer. This would not be an ideal situation for us, of course, but we are committed to finishing every major planned feature before we consider moving the game to 1.0.

In the worst (and least likely) possible of financial cases that required the disbandment of all paid developers of the game, 4 of the listed developers are directors of The Indie Stone with an invested interest in the success of the game and company, who would cut their income significantly and/or supplement development of the game with other work to get through any financial difficulties. Despite this no doubt causing progress to slow significantly, the 4 directors hold all required skills to continue development of the game during this nightmare scenario.

Details of major milestones can be found below.

What is required for 1.0?

Two major features are yet to be implemented into the game, both of which are currently in full-time uninterrupted development each with dedicated full-time developer support. These are:

NPCS - A far reaching and in-depth NPC system with character relationships, personalities, and an emergent story engine that allows for diverse and emergent character based zombie survival story unique to every playthrough. This also includes the tutorial, a return of Kate and Baldspot who starred in the early alphas of the game.

Several features require either significant modifications, rewrites or completion before we could consider 1.0.

Map completion - We still have a major city, an army base, more wilderness, and several small towns to implement to the game map.

UI Rewrite - The UI isn’t perfect by any stretch. We would like to get a more intuitive and ergonomic UI system implemented.

Stealth / Combat - New animations to allow for stealth mechanics (looking round corners, crouching behind walls, cover etc) as well as a rewrite of the combat system to leverage new animations to make combat more involved, intuitive and fluid.

We’ve been aiming for these to be completed by the end of the year, but as it seems the end of the year is looming toward us like an unstoppable army of the undead, it seems more likely it will fall into Q1 next year. However, this too is not set in stone. We tend to avoid ETAs because Early Access development in particular is often filled with unknowns and we want to ensure we get these highly anticipated features right.

In the meantime however we will continue to update the game and provide new features for our community to play with. One of our developers full time responsibility is providing frequent and new items, crafting recipes, skills and survival gameplay elements to fill out any holes in gameplay, and provide frequent feature rich game updates in line with community feedback, while the other developers focus on finishing these specific remaining major features.

What happens at this point depends entirely on whether the game is making money or not, but given the past solid performance of the game we see no reason why it shouldn’t be. Several developers within the team will likely start exploring our second project at this point, however we have dedicated and passionate developers who were brought into the company via the Project Zomboid modding community, emotionally invested in the game, who are already a big part of the development and communicating with the community. As long as Project Zomboid is making enough to support their continued development of the game, and they are happy to continue working on it (which seems likely), we will continue making Project Zomboid indefinitely as long as there is interest.

That all said, we can’t make any solid promises beyond the 1.0 mark, however there are countless things we would love to do that go way beyond 1.0 and sales make us confident that we’ll get the opportunity to explore them. Truth be told, given that it was Zomboid that put the money in the bank in the first place, as long as our company is secure and we can fund any other project's development comfortably, it's very probable we'd be willing to put some money back into the game beyond the point it's sustaining itself if there are any features in particular we can't bear to leave out of the game.”

Miten kauan Early Access -vaihe suunnilleen kestää?

“See above!”

Miten täysi versio eroaa Early Access -versiosta?

“See above!”

Millainen on Early Access -version nykyinen tila?

“See above!”

Hinnoitellaanko peli toisin Early Accessin aikana ja sen jälkeen?

“It will likely be £5, $8 more expensive once we hit 1.0. Due to our commitment to making sure early adopters get the cheapest price in appreciation of their early support, we will never appear on bundles, or in sales that take it to or below the original alpha price of £5, $8 until a long time post 1.0. This commitment also means that, until 1.0 and the price increase, we will never be willing to go beyond a 40% sale.”

Kuraattoreiden suosittelema

2. maaliskuu

Mondoids are pretty good when there’s a video to show off, and really good when they come in playable form. So when we do both? Criminy. Even now we can hear the distant drum of simultaneous international palpitations.
So… coolest stuff first!

Build 31 IWBUMS

Build 31 is now available for public testing, and should you wish to partake you’ll want to investigate this thread that details the necessary steps. The current changelist can be found here but highlights include: the revamped professions and traits, the new key/padlock system, tainted water, the new Challenges system, some much-desired MP Admin features and all manner of general balance and fixes.

Clearly, as ever, we’d like you to report all previously unreported bugs on our tracker but in this instance it would also be of huge value if you could report back on how the balance feels in terms of the professions and traits you choose. We think it’s in good shape, but there will still be kinks to iron out that’ll no doubt be revealed on MP servers.
There will also be additions to 31 in the coming week, with RJ currently making noises about providing presets for character creation.

Re-Animation Revolution

Now that our awesome friend Martin Greenall’s animations are being fed into the game it’s becoming clearer and clearer that they’ll have a huge impact on the way PZ plays and feels.

We’ve spent the last week building processes that will blend animations together seamlessly and allow for easy modding. What this video shows is our branching anim state machine, deferred movement for accurate animated travel / foot sliding reduction and advanced blending. This is still WIP, but will lead to a huge improvement in animations and flow of gameplay – and will revolutionize combat. And the way it looks in-game? Well, just have a look at how it looks in-game.

(IMPORTANT: Watch to the end of the video to see the awesome-sauce zombie anims!)

So… when? Well, we’re aiming for Build 32 but there’s a lot of work that still needs to be done. Watch this space. And EreWeGo’s remix too – while we’re at it.

Tara!

That’s all for now, but rest assured that there’s plenty more cool stuff bubbling under the surface. It’s a really exciting time for Project Zomboid at the moment, and we hope that it’s the feeling you’re getting too. See you in seven days!

Today’s Featured Image by Steam user Nik_RJ . Want an email every time Mondoid comes around, or we release a build? Just investigate here!

23. helmikuu

This week is a busy week. As usual we’re grinding away at our respective grindstones either trying to get Build 31 ready for testing on the I Will Back Up My Save branch (this will be pretty soon, most likely. How soon is not clear quite yet), chiselling away at the huge map expansion, filling up the airwaves, poking in AI brains or rejigging the animation system.

Build 31

The most recent addition to build 31 is tainted water. Survivors will need to boil water to sterilize it to make it safe to drink without getting sick. As well as rain collector barrels, survivors can now finally get unclean water from rivers. This should make non-carpenter survivers happy! Finally big props and thanks go to the amazing blindcoder, who totally beat us to this feature, just as we were planning it, with his amazing mod.

We as usual have no ETA on when 31 will drop to IWBUMs, but any internal test version could be the one we go with.

31 is just the start of a massive push to increase the crafting recipes and skills in the game, as we discussed last week. These elements will likely make the bulk of future updates all the way until release, with exception to bug fixes and features such as map expansion, NPCs, vehicles, stealth, accessibility improvements, and general polish etc. We’re also in discussions at the moment that may lead to us getting a lot more support in the future when it comes to taking the game toward release, particularly fixing up and optimizing the multiplayer code. We’ll see how it all goes!

Anim Update and 3D Character Support

In the rewrite of the animation system, we hit a problem where the new animation driven movement would have been completely incompatible with our characters, and in trying to solve this problem it turns out it looks like it may be feasible for us to remove the requirement of FBO and Shader support for the 3D characters in the game.

What this means is it will be possible for the pre 2004 PCs that so far have to have 3D models set to none, may* be able to get away with having a 3D player character, to take advantage of all the new animations, as well as the smooth movement and cool lighting.

*It all depends on the PC in question, the CPU in particular. Milage may vary.

It’s not clear yet quite how well they will deal with it, but generally a PC with a decent processor and a poor GPU may still manage to have a single player 3D character without much of an FPS hit. It should be pointed out that the whole reason 3D characters tend to be done on the GPU is because they are pretty expensive, so no one should expect to be able to put ten 3D zombies on an old laptop and have much luck, but it opens up the 3D characters non-the-less.

It’s too early to say for sure how successful it is, but just so ye olde’ PC people out there know we have your back and are trying our hardest to get the best game possible for the low spec PCs. At the end of the day though it’s balancing act and we can’t shy away from pushing the game forward.

On the animation system itself, we’ve more or less got animation driven movement working in the game. It’s not to video quality yet, since the above changes to the 3D characters have made things a little odd looking at the moment, but it’s already clear the impact this will have to the quality of the movement of the characters is huge. The actual movement of the characters across the world being determined by the animator improves everything about them, particularly the zombies, with their uneven and stumbling movement, it will make them feel 10x more like zombies you see in them there films.

The new XML driven anim state system (as well as being moddable) will allow for us to do quite intricate branching animations that could lead to some really cool stuff, particularly in combat, allowing for more realistic and interactive combat (potentially involving two characters, say struggling to get free of a grabbing zombie).

That’s it for this week! Sorry if it was a bit short and was more waffling on about the animation system without showing anything new, but we’re well on the way and have exciting stuff ahead, so back to work with us!

Title image by Bullwinkle. If you would like to subscribe to our newsletter, please send a self addressed envelope to the following link.

Arvostelut

“What can I say? This game's interface looks so simplistic by today's standards, and yet the Indie Stone team has managed to possibly create one of the best post-apocalyptic zombie survival games in existence to date.”
Max Power! (105 hrs)

“The gameplay is surprisingly addicting, sometimes I look at the clock and wonder where the last 4 hours went, but looking at my fort shows me where they went.”
syfy2K4 (1,021 hrs)

Tietoja pelistä

Project Zomboid is an open-ended zombie-infested sandbox. It asks one simple question – how will you die?

In the towns of Muldraugh and West Point, survivors must loot houses, build defences and do their utmost to delay their inevitable death day by day. No help is coming – your continued survival relies on your own cunning, luck and ability to evade a relentless horde.

Current Features

Hard-core Sandbox Zombie Survival Game with a focus on realistic survival.

Online multiplayer survival with persistent player run servers.

Full line of sight system and real-time lighting, sound and visibility mechanics. Hide in the shadows, keep quiet and keep the lights off at night, or at least hang sheets over the windows.

Vast and growing map (loosely based on a real world location) for you to explore, loot and set up your fortress. Check out Blindcoder’s map project: http://pzmap.crash-override.net/

Use tools and items to craft weapons, barricade and cook. You can even build zombie proof forts by chopping trees, sawing wood and scavenging supplies.

Deal with depression, boredom, hunger, thirst and illness while trying to survive.

Day turns to night. The electricity falters. Hordes migrate. Winter draws in. Society is in freefall.

Farming, trapping, fishing, carpentry, character customization, skills and perks that develop based on what you do in-game.

Hundreds of zombies with swarm mechanics and in-depth visual and hearing systems.

Proper zombies that don’t run. (Unless you tell them to in the sandbox menu).

A ton of amazing atmospheric music tracks by the prodigy that is Zach Beever.

Instant action ‘Last Stand’ mode, on top of our Sandbox and Survival

Full, open and powerful Lua modding support.

Game pad support

Local 4 player split-screen co-op

We’re a small team at the moment, but we’re also committed to providing the following:

planned Features:

The return of our PZ Stories mode that also serves as first ever tutorial actively trying to kill you at every turn. Kate and Baldspot return!

In-depth and varied NPC encounters driven in a persistent world, powered by a metagame system that turns each play-through into your very own zombie survival movie with emergent narrative gameplay.

Engine upgrade to make the most of your graphics card as well as your processor

Constant expansion of the countryside and cities around Muldraugh and West Point

>Spent hours collecting loot and supplies>started getting hungry>ran through hordes of zombies and cheated death multiple times whilst trying to make my way back home>popped some salmon in the oven>read some books>flame started to rise behind the oven>filled a pot full of water to put the fire out>didn't realise electrical fires were a thing>fire erupted into an inferno engulfing me, my friend and all my gear

Was co-oping with a friend, Until I got bit. We headed back to our hideout to stash our stuff before my inevitable demise.As I stashed all my gear while he went afk.So I left a bell peper and mutton chop soup in the oven for him (I'm a nice guy).Then I ran off on a suicide mission to steal everything from the police station.After Wading through a sea of zombies I got a shotgun and a ton of ammo.I managed to lose my conga of zombies and stashed my loot in a bin for us to get later.I die, spawn in as a new man and start heading back to our safehouse.My friend skypes me and says our safehouse is on fire. I forgot to tell him I left that bell peper and mutton chop soup in the oven.Our safehouse is guttered and our stockpile is ash and he only just escapes with his life.

This game is an absolute blast. It's hard to effectively convey how much fun this game is, because it doesn't seem like it would be fun and the trailers and screenshots do not do it justice, at all. But believe me when I say; if you're looking for a truely intense zombie apocalypse survival experience that is as realistic as it gets, where almost every moment incites true butterfly-inducing terror that resonates with your innermost being, while giving you all of this glistening, pant-soiling brilliance in a slightly retro, top-down, isometric view. This is your game.

I mean, for pete's sakes, you have to change your bandages at least twice a day or you run the risk of making your wounds infected, which will slowly kill you, unless you disinfect them with alcohol and a sterilized bandage. You have to cover up windows with blankets, otherwise zombies will see you/lights inside houses and they absolutely, definitely, positively will check and break a window. When you get bitten? It slowly gets worse as you succumb to the zombie virus, you don't die instantly. You get paranoid of anything, you become fatigued and, after about a day, you die. Slowly, but surely. This game is cool as all hell.

The controls are easy to grasp and the game runs smoothly, even if you're running the server software the game comes with and hosting at the same time, which is something I do frequently, to play with friends. It's also very easy to set up and comes with it's own server options.

Speaking of options. Holy hell, the custom options for starting a new game are phenominal. You get to customize what your character is like, down to their personality as well as how often weapons spawn, how often things decay and what type of zombies you're dealing with. You could opt for a 28 Days Later feel, making them fast, strong and generally a massive pain in the backside, or if you're more into your Romero lore, you could set them up to be classic, brittle shamblers that seem to spot you from 700 lightyears away.

Oh yeah, it's hard as hell as well. Don't expect to live forever, like other zombie games seem to allow you to do. This game is very realistic and eventually, you'll most likely run out of food and water. If you do manage to ensure your indefinite survival, then congratulations. You'd probably end up surviving a real zombie apocalypse.

ShakyShawn8151's Review: I played this game in the past, and just recently picked it up on steam. I played it when it was not very well developed. Then today I picked up a copy and I will share with you all my experiance.

Started out by clicking beginer. I am no noob to survivial games, so I started out in a nice house. It was a 1 bedorom flat with a open living/dining room. there were curtains on all the windows so I took the chance to close them after taking a glance out them to check my suroundings [It was all clear].

I then had a small sence of security that I knew would not last for long, as all it takes is for my poorly spec'd char to make a noise and attract walkers (thankfully I did not see any runners).

I then made my way to the kitchen and saw that there was 2 windows, one with no curtain and one by the door, which was really good as I did not want to open the door and be rushed by zombies. I grabbed a sheet I found and covered it over the other window. The house was now poorly secured and would provide a temporary shelter. I then went though the house and looked for all things that i could put to use. Sadl all I found was some food, which I ate then decieded I had to journey out to the unknown or I would not survive an attack or defend my shelter, I looked out the windows and tried to get an idea of what was around me, I saw another house to the east of my location, so I had to get there and hope it was empty.

After I left out the back door all sence of security left me, and I felt like a small part of a huge world. I looked around a bit and slowly made my way to the backdoor of the house, I then did not feel safe to just walk right in, so I snuck around to each window and peaked in and saw every room was empty, besides the one that did not have a window.

I then entered the house via the backdoor, and started looking the house, I found a skill book (cannot remember which book it was) I then took a bat, some sheets, and some food, I then snuck back to the house I started in.

After stuffing my face my character started feeling like a fat misserable person (depression kicked in). I then found a magaziene in the bookshelf and gave it a read hoping this might take the players mind of the depression, after a good 5 minutes of messing around I went to gets some sleep after going out and checking to see if the perimiter was safe and secure. I slept for 7 hours.

I awoke with one thought; "How long can I survive like this"

I searched and looted, and fought my way day by day, every day being harded than the last, food running shorter and shorter. I ended up getting caught while transvering the forest in the night (Which I still feel like an idiot for) I was panicing out in the rain in the dark, and was trying to get back to my shelter. I had not known that I had a pack of zombies on me, and I ran back into my shelter. within 2 minutes that had me surrounded so I knew I had no way out, I was a sitting duck, I managed to use up the ammo I did have and had to run upstair to fend off what I could before I met my maker, I was backed into a corner and fought to keep 15 zombies at bay with a hurt leg and bleeding for 3 minutes before I died...

9/10 would die again and enjo my experiance anyday. was a good buy. HIGHLY RECOMENDED

Got scratched by a zombie, spent a day bandaging my head up. A day later I had become infected with the zombie virus and knew zombification was fast approaching. So I did what I had to do. I drank bleach and threw myself out of a window.

This game is so awesome, even though i'm only few hours in it, i already got it. It is totally the best zombies survival game out there, not DayZ not H1Z1 just Project Zomboid.

In this game you will experience the real fear, the real feelings, you will get into the game as a survivor! you won't feel like you are playing a normal game. It is like you're in The Walking Dead series.

This is one of the most realistic games ever.if you like this genre, please don't waste your time and just buy this game already! totally recommended.

They just need to fix the Multiplayer a bit, the other players movment isn't that smooth as it should be. In PvE it's not that bad, but in PvP when you need to shoot other people, its pretty difficult when they are totally lagged.

Project Zomboid is a game that repeatedly puts you in danger until the point where you get yourself set up in a "House of vauge saftey" where you would start to line your building with meger means of defence until you can build enough that you start to belive you can survive the appocolypse, and this is what I call "Survival Hubris" kicks in and you start getting greedy and careless planning out routes that to your younger self of only a few hours would find rash and "unliveable" but because of all of the close brushes with the undead where you have remained unscathed you decide that it is in fact a good idea to go to the police station only a few blocks from your safehouse with the idea of grabbing all the ammo and flipping off a few zeds and while holding out your most fallic of fingers a zombie will sneeze on it ever so gently that you become ill and hide in your safehouse until your eyes slide out your ♥♥♥♥ and you die, Project Zomboid is a game that rakes you in the face until you love it, it's true that you need to spend a few months getting over the hole that this game has torn in your ♥♥♥♥♥♥ but you'll be well inclined to jump onto it bare ♥♥♥♥♥ again in the future.

If you're looking for the zombie game that focuses on surviving and not going in guns blazing this is the perfect game for you. The game is very blunt and lets you know right when you start up a game that you WILL eventually die. There is no cure waiting for you, no military evac post taking you to some cruise ship. It's just you and the undead.

Right now NPC's aren't implemented which makes you feel like the last person on earth, but the game is still a blast. Recently they added an overhaul to healing and instead of just slapping on a medkit or the likes you have to disinfect and bandage wounds (or remove bullets or glass). In my opinion this is the most realistic zombie game to date. The sounds are pretty good and the soundtrack is absolutely amazing. With the coming features promised the game will get even better. Multiplayer is implemented so hop on and have fun with others.

I really don't write reviews because I generally could care less what people care about games. I just wanted to pop on for Project Zomboid and give huge thanks to the devs for continuously keeping their community up to date and not going dark for extended amounts of time. I think that PZ is a really fun concept full of opportunity and I cant wait to see where it goes. I am one happy fan, keep doing the good work.

cant w8 for extend map and end-game contants! currently i feel i dunno what should i do when done to make shelter and food..but its good so far, they show us they keep pushing to new stuff, and got feedback also.so i recommand this game!yep!

Project Zomboid is one of the only games I still play, and while it is still in Early Acess, I still have incredible amounts of fun with my friends. I only wish it was easier to create and manage a small server for friends to play. There is tons of content, and i definitely recommend this game!

No real easy multiplayer options yet, unless you join neglected servers. They exist, and it is possible to host a server, but awkward for a computer novice. BUT, a very fun adventure that captures the essence of isolation, desperation, and determination inherent in a survival experience. The fact that there are zombies just gives a backdrop. A lot of little details that leave you with a robust and lovingly-crafted world to explore. This game has medications such as beta-blockers, sleeping aids, painkillers, and even vitamins. Name another game with that.

Also, there seems to be a lot of active development and mod content from the community. I'm not certain how much longer the challenge of existing will keep me occupied in a single player experience, but I can certainly envision this game's development will bring me back periodically to enjoy the new content.

Forgot my food was in the oven and went to bed... woke up to a burning house and jumped out of the upstairs window. Survived the fire and fall, only to die from my fractured femur whilst my house burnt behind me.

My steam profile only shows 15.2 hours logged, but I had this game way before it was on Steam, somewhere around build 11 or 12. This is hands down, without a shadow of a doubt, my favorite indie game. Worth more than the price tag, which is rare. Most games tend to fall short or just "cut it" for the time you get to play. This game feels so massive in scope, especially with all the updates the team brings to it.